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In search advertising you pay per click, because the searcher asked for something. On Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and display networks nobody is searching: you buy a place in a feed, priced per thousand views. Spend €450, get 50,000 impressions, and your CPM is €9. It is the oldest price in advertising, inherited from newspapers and television, which sold space per thousand readers or viewers long before the web. What 1,000 impressions cost on TikTok is in TikTok ads cost.
Who sets the price
Meta runs an auction for every impression. The winner is not the highest bid but the ad with the highest total value: your bid, times the chance this person does what you want, plus the quality of your ad. So your audience sets the price, because small and sought-after groups attract more bidders, and so does your creative: a video people watch to the end earns a higher quality score and a lower CPM. A weak ad costs you twice, with fewer clicks on more expensive impressions.
That makes CPM an outcome rather than a dial. What you get back depends on your click-through rate and on what happens after the click.
CPM is still the right tool for one job: planning reach. Want 20,000 people in your target region to see your ad three times a week at a €9 CPM? That is 60,000 impressions, or €540 a week. Work back from the reach you need rather than forward from a round budget; the marketing budget calculator helps split that across channels.
What €500 buys at four price levels
500 euro budget
- Broad audience, JanuaryCPM 5 euro
100,000impressions40,000 people at frequency 2.5
- Typical European marketCPM 9 euro
55,556impressions22,222 people at frequency 2.5
- Narrow B2B audienceCPM 15 euro
33,333impressions13,333 people at frequency 2.5
- Narrow audience in DecemberCPM 25 euro
20,000impressions8,000 people at frequency 2.5
Worked example. Each square stands for a thousand impressions.
What a thousand impressions cost, market by market
If you advertise in more than one country, budgets do not travel unchanged. 2026 benchmark data for online shops on Facebook shows a spread of almost three to one between the cheapest and the dearest of the markets below.
| Market | Facebook CPM, 2026 | What $1,000 buys |
|---|---|---|
| United States | $16.08 | about 62,200 impressions |
| United Kingdom | $11.81 | 84,700 |
| Germany | $9.05 | 110,500 |
| Netherlands | $8.58 | 116,600 |
| Belgium | $7.96 | 125,600 |
| France | $6.95 | 143,900 |
| Poland | $5.55 | 180,200 |
The third column assumes every dollar buys at the average price, which it never quite does. A cheaper market is not automatically a better one: purchasing power, competition and your margin there matter more than the CPM. What a full campaign costs per month is broken down in what Facebook ads cost, and whether social or search fits you better in Meta ads or Google Ads.
One online shop works it through
The fix is rarely a lower CPM. A better ad that earns more clicks, or a checkout that converts more visitors (conversion rate optimisation), moves the sum far more. The number that matters is the €23 per order, the CPA; test your own figures in the ROAS calculator.
Watch frequency as well, the number of times one person sees your ad. Once it climbs past five, clicks fall and cost per result rises: time for new creative or a wider audience. To reach people who resemble your customers, see lookalike audiences.
CPM questions from advertisers
Why is my CPM so high?
Usually a small or popular audience, an ad few people respond to, or the weeks around Black Friday and December. Widen the audience and test new creative before you raise the budget.
Should I pay per impression or per click?
On search engines, per click: the searcher has a question. On social platforms you usually pay per impression and let the platform optimise for the result you choose. Compare channels on cost per customer.
What is a good CPM?
One that fits what happens next. A €20 CPM with plenty of enquiries beats a €4 CPM with none.